An asset management system is a software system that continually inputs current real-time data from a set of computationally intelligent nodes where each such node associates with some asset; coherently organizes these data; provides methods to extract useful information and knowledge from these data; and potentially provides methods to direct those nodes.
Asset management systems are useful in connection with the management of the manufacture, storage, delivery and other logistics associated with physical goods.
A critical aspect relates to tracking such goods, and providing to the controlling industrial entities crucial data such as: current and historic location of the goods, current and historic rate at which the goods are traveling, current and historic state information regarding those goods such as humidity, temperature, shock, change in weight as detected by pressure gauges, tamper-detection by contact-sensors, and so on.
Within the field of enterprise asset management, physical asset management includes various methods and systems that help various types of enterprises manage various physical and infrastructure assets, including in relation to design, construction, commissioning, operating, maintaining, repairing, modifying, replacing and decommissioning/disposal of such physical and infrastructure assets, which may include equipment, tools, structures, production and service plants, power generating assets, water and waste treatment assets, facilities, distribution networks, transport systems, buildings, inventory, supplies, vehicles, products, information technology systems, and a wide range of other physical assets. Information technology systems have emerged that catalog and help enterprises manage physical assets, including systems for recording locations of such assets, and including systems that use networking and tagging technologies, such as WiFi and RFID, to store, collect, and manage certain information about the assets.
In the context of asset management systems, the prior art fails to provide continuous instantaneous access to all tracked states and to instantaneously inform operators of events that require their attention.
Range, real-time access to data at the nodes, the potential for interference, scalability, physical constraints, centralized control, and power consumption are all challenges in prior art systems that utilize WiFi and RFID. With respect to WiFi, while WiFi appears to be a good choice due to WiFi's decent range and the fact that it contains proper protocols at all levels of the software stack, it suffers from WiFi's demands of high-power, rendering a system based on purely battery-powered WiFi devices infeasible. RFID has range constraints in that a reader must be in range of an asset in order to obtain the information therefrom. Additionally, provisioning of assets using WiFi or RFID tags is generally cumbersome, requiring a secure data channel connection for WiFi or a printer for writing an ID to a tag and physical access to the asset in the case of passive RFID tags.
The above is a non-exhaustive list of shortcomings of the prior art that a BLE enabled asset management system (hereinafter “BLEATS”) can address. In embodiments, a BLE enabled asset management system may comprise a software system that continually inputs current real-time data, such as from a set of computationally intelligent tags, where each such tag physically associates with some assets; coherently organizes these data; provides methods to extract useful information and knowledge from these data; and potentially provides methods to direct those tags.